1.7.6-Kingedmundsroyalmurder
Brick!club chapter 6: of sorrow, joy, and the island of conclusions I’ll double back and do yesterday’s chapter tomorrow, because it’s long and I want to talk about it, but for now I’m just gonna bask in the delightful feeling of being officially caught up. Let’s see how long this lasts… So after having spent the past several chapters dealing with the agonies of Jean Valjean, we now get to deal with the ecstasy of Fantine, which is simultaneously heartwarming and tragic. We start with full on tragic, what with her being so eager to see the mayor and so very disappointed when he keeps failing to show. Fantine is clearly in an extremely bad way, so much so that not even misery can render her beautiful anymore. We’re told she rarely even has the energy to sit up anymore, though she’s actually quite active in this chapter. I suppose that’s the power of High Emotion. "Comme l’exactitude était de la bonté, il était exact." (As promptness was godly, he was prompt.) I don’t know why I love that line so much, but I do. It vaguely reminds me of, like, the boy scout pledge or something. (Now I want tiny!valjean as a boy scout with bonus tiny!javert as a fellow scout. Or alternatively Valjean and Javert as scoutmasters and tiny!Bahorel causing so much trouble while at scout camp. And this has nothing to do with anything, whoops.) So yeah, Valjean fails to come and Fantine is devastated. And the saddest part is that she displays this mostly by being resigned. She’s not angry, she doesn’t complain, she doesn’t even ask aloud where he is. She just… shrinks back down despondently, almost like she half expected that it was all too good to last anyway. Though a couple hours later she does find it in herself to complain, since she has apparently decided that she will die the next day. Whether she actually knows this or just believes it is unclear, though given her description I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew. So she sings, and I am trying really, really hard to ignore the narrator/virgin Mary implications and not succeeding so let’s just move on. Apparently her singing is so poignant that even Sister Simplice sheds a single tear. They find out what happened to Valjean and Sister Simplice has to figure out what to tell Fantine. And I really like this bit because, as has already been pointed out, Sister Simplice too has a moral dilemma here. She cares deeply about Fantine, clearly, and doesn’t want to do anything that could possibly make her worse, but she’s also sworn never to tell a lie and in the end cannot do it even for Fantine. Thankfully, Fantine takes the news well. She also apologizes for getting angry, which is so sad. Because it’s yet more proof that Fantine still doesn’t believe she has a right to her emotions. She didn’t have the right to be angry at Bambatabois earlier, and now she doesn’t have the right to be frustrated about Valjean. It really brings home that this probably isn’t just her natural temperament coming through but the result of years of social conditioning that punished her for her anger and rewarded her for being sweet and pliant and accommodating (or at the very least seemed to reward her). Thankfully she still feels allowed to express joy, and she proceeds to do so for several pages. Including a digression about Cosette’s pretty hands. Which… nope. Not okay. Not when we get a description of those self-same hands later. But anyway. Apparently joy has made her well again. Is this an actual thing that happens, or is this more Narrative Sickness Syndrome? I’m not familiar enough with serious illness to know. But alas Valjean has not gone to fetch Cosette and he will not return with her tomorrow and it will not be okay at all and I kind of hate knowing the broad story arcs of this book sometimes because it makes it nigh-on impossible to enjoy the happy bits without remembering how it will all end in tragedy. Commentary Pilferingapples I DID NOT NEED TO BE REMINDED ABOUT COSETTE’S HANDS AT THIS POINT. Ugh, does Fantine have ANY idea what the Thenardiers are doing to her daughter? She clearly doesn’t think they have any more scruples- her statements about them turning Cosette on to the streets proves that— but then if she thought they weren’t caring for Cosette at ALL she might have gotten more careless about her payments? I DON’T KNOW but for the first time I’m almost glad she didn’t ever see what all her misery was buying for her daughter. I’m glad you put the Scoutmaster thing in here, because I NEED SOME HAPPY THOUGHTS NOW THANKS.